Feeling Good

Your emotions follow your thoughts just as surely as baby ducks follow their mother. But the fact that the baby ducks follow faithfully along doesn’t prove that the mother knows where she is going!

In contrast, you can learn to change the way you think about things, and you can also change your basic values and beliefs. And when you do, you will often experience profound and lasting changes in your mood, outlook, and productivity.

But all these theories about the causes of our bad moods have the tendency to make us victims—because we think the causes result from something beyond our control.

Table 3–1. Definitions of Cognitive Distortions

1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3. MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.

4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive

your thoughts create your feelings.

In practical terms the study indicated that during periods of depression you lose some of your capacity for clear thinking; you have trouble putting things into proper perspective

The first step is to take a close look at what you say about yourself when you insist you are no good. The evidence you present in defense of your worthlessness will usually, if not always, make no sense

Adolf Hitler was clearly a great achiever at the height of his career. Would you say that made him particularly worthwhile? Obviously not. Of course, Hitler would have insisted he was a great human being because he was a successful leader and because he equated his worth and achievements

the first place, consider the fact that most human beings are not great achievers, yet most people are happy and well respected. In fact, one could say that the majority of the people in the United States are loved and happy, yet by definition most of them are pretty much average. Thus, it cannot be the case that happiness and love come only through great achievement. Depression, like the plague, is no respecter of status and strikes those who live in fancy neighborhoods as often—if not more frequently—as it does those of average or below-average means. Clearly, happiness and great achievement have no necessary connection.

Success does not guarantee happiness. The two are not identical and are not causally related. So you end up chasing a mirage. Since your thoughts are the true key to your moods and not success